Key to getting maximum mileage out of this year&#8217;s crew is for the new coach to somehow get players to repeat their peak seasons

Vancouver Canucks head coach John Tortorella addresses a media availability session at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Wednesday, Sept, 11, 2013. The Canucks started their training camp for the 2013-14 NHL season on Wednesday.

VANCOUVER — We know how John Tortorella is at his charming best (recently), and his sarcastic worst (last spring). We know he loves dogs, which frankly puts him on the Christmas card list, pending further review.

We know his reputation for sometimes brutal honesty, the symbolism he attaches to the act of blocking a shot — and we’re pretty sure, because the record doesn’t lie, that he’s no slouch as a hockey coach.

But how is he with clocks? Calendars? Has his time machine been in for its 50,000-mile tuneup?

Because here’s the thing about the Vancouver Canucks: most everyone who looks at the roster heading into the 2013-14 National Hockey League season and sees a team still quite capable of competing for the big prize is basing that impression on a stale-dated memory of events long past.

You know, when Ryan Kesler was a 40-goal monster and Selke Trophy winner, and the twins were winning scoring titles, and Roberto Luongo was sporting the best goals-against average of his life, and Alex Edler’s upside seemed limitless and Alex Burrows was the Sedins’ secret weapon, and ... oh yes, the team went to the Stanley Cup Final riding the crest of all those players’ peak performance levels.

So how realistic is it to expect John Tortorella to wave his magic wand and have the calendar reset to 2010-11? That can’t really be the “reset” GM Mike Gillis spoke of this past summer, can it?

Is he any more likely than any other coach to be able to go deep enough into the well to plumb the best out of each of those players, three and even four seasons after they peaked?

“Well, we’re hoping so,” defenceman Kevin Bieksa said Wednesday, when a dozen players, followed by Gillis and Tortorella, were trotted out for mass interviews in a press conference setting on the first day of fitness testing in advance of training camp.

“The success of the season depends on your best players playing their best. Injuries factor into that, sometimes there’s things that are out of your control, but when everyone’s healthy and able to play the full season, yeah, we need Ryan going, we need Roberto back to form and the twins doing their thing. All the defencemen are going to have to play well, our role players are going to have to be contributing ...”

Tortorella doesn’t believe it’s a longshot.

“That’s a big part of my job, that’s part of my responsibility is to get them to go back (to that level),” he said. “There’s been some success but the last two years it’s out in the first round. They understand that.

“It sneaks up on you a little bit when you get there and you’re within one game of getting it done, it sneaks up on you that you still got to keep on improving. I wasn’t here, (but) I think one of the biggest parts of my job is to get them to realize ‘We gotta get back to details, we gotta get back to a little bit of grind.’ ”

Gillis didn’t acquire anyone during the off-season that will automatically bring that to the table, but Tortorella thinks it’s a mindset more than a personnel problem.

“I believe it can be done within here. And again, it’s not about getting out there and brawling, it’s about little things: Protecting a puck, eating a puck on the wall when you can’t get it out instead of turning it over, blocking shots,” he said.

“I know that just lights a fire because (people think) you’re just playing defence when you block a shot, but blocking shots develops a culture. And when you have a Sedin blocking a shot, watch what the bench does. It’s 10-feet tall. All those little things help in developing who you are as a group.”

Unspoken, but quite evident as the players spoke Wednesday, was their mixture of trepidation and excitement, for they also suspect that they needed to be shaken out of the malaise of the last two years.

Tortorella’s predecessor was a splendid coach for this franchise, but Alain Vigneault’s was not an iron fist, and his vaunted meritocracy -- play well, and you get ice time; play poorly and you sit -- was no good for young players.

The new guy, surprisingly to some, says there is more to him than just kicking butts and losing his temper.

He intends to be patient, to a point, with young players. He intends the relationship with his players to be a two-way street.

“Obviously, he believes in a rigorous training camp and pushing us as hard as he can, and the philosophy that you practise really hard and it makes the game easy, so we’re well aware of what’s ahead as far as the testing and practising and skating,” said Bieksa, who hasn’t always been the most coachable player on the team.

“But this group welcomes that. We’re a group that takes pride in our conditioning and our fitness ... but that doesn’t mean a coach can’t come in and push us even harder. I think he’ll do that and he’ll give us the honest truth, and maybe at times we do need that more.

“We need to know when we’re not giving it our all, when there’s more in the tank, when we’re not executing, when we’re not quite focussed.

“And it seems like it’s going to be through the direct route, and that’s a good thing. There’s not going to be any ambiguity, it’s going to be ‘This is what you’re not doing; fix it.’”

What we do know is that he should have a roster chock-full of highly-motivated players.

“Well, two first-round exits, and last year was just straight-up embarrassing, so we have a lot to prove to ourselves and to everybody else,” said Bieksa.

Just for starters: Kesler, that he can stay healthy and return to being a second-line powerhouse. Luongo, that he can put aside the white noise and carry the load if he has to play 70 games. Edler, that he can rediscover the promise that went backwards last year. Zack Kassian, that he can blossom given a little more patience than Vigneault had. The twins, that they can become even better, more complete players, harder to push out of games.

“In talking to (the Sedins), I think they want to do it. I think they want the opportunity,” Tortorella said. “I tell you, from just what I’ve seen, how they are, how they handle themselves, how they speak, it’s a good situation. To have two top players think the way they think.

“They want it, they’re going to get it. And I think that’s how you get it to a next level. When players like that are asking for it, to do those little things, not just with the puck but away from the puck, that’s when you get your team where you want it to be.”

It seems, on the surface, to be a pipe-dream. Asking the Canucks to be what they were in 2010-11, only grittier.

Then again, if it were a simple fix, they would have hired someone softer.

“I’ve always told players: when you see it one time, you’re in trouble, because you know it’s there,” Tortorella said.

Vancouver Canucks head coach John Tortorella addresses a media availability session at Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Wednesday, Sept, 11, 2013. The Canucks started their training camp for the 2013-14 NHL season on Wednesday.

Photograph by: JONATHAN HAYWARD, THE CANADIAN PRESS

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